


The Sound of It

by fypical



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M, Slash, richard siken, smiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-07
Updated: 2011-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-27 01:27:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/290102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fypical/pseuds/fypical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Aziraphale's bookshop, they wait for the inevitable punishment. Apparently, the higher powers are taking their time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sound of It

**Author's Note:**

> Poem taken from Richard Siken's "Saying Your Names".

_All night I stretched my arms across him,_

 _Rivers of blood, the dark woods,_

 _Singing with all my skin and bone_

 _“Please keep him safe. Let him lay his head on my chest_

 _And we will be like sailors, swimming in the sound of it, dashed to pieces.”_

 _Makes a cathedral, him pressing against me,_

 _His lips at my neck, and yes, I do believe his mouth is heaven,_

 _His kisses falling over me like stars_

 **— Richard Siken**

 **——————**

They both know they’re in trouble. Each side is pretending it didn’t happen, officially, but unofficially, they’re in trouble. Hastur finds Crowley and so Crowley leaves his less-than-immaculate-nowadays London flat and hides in Aziraphale’s bookshop.

What Hastur finds when he chases Crowley there is a very cross Principality who has refound – or is only now using – the ability to destroy demons with a single touch. Crowley’s eyes are huge as Hastur disintegrates before them and Aziraphale burns brighter than the sun.

It’s terrifying.

When the deed is done, Crowley stares for a moment, then blinks, and when he opens his eyes again, Aziraphale looks nothing beyond tired.

“Well,” says Crowley quietly, “I think that’ll put you in the good books more.”

Aziraphale laughs a bit, and then says, “Heaven doesn’t have any other kind of books.”

Crowley worries that he too will be smote if he touches Aziraphale.

He kisses him instead.

He doesn’t disintegrate, which is nice. Aziraphale makes a little noise in the back of his throat, into Crowley’s mouth, and then suddenly Crowley’s up against the wall and Aziraphale tastes like goodness and purity and clean. That’s also quite nice, except—

Snakelike and frightened, Crowley wriggles out of Aziraphale’s grasp, because this is something that can’t just  _happen_ , they just averted the Apocalypse, they can’t  _do this_ , they’re in trouble, and he tells this to Aziraphale, only half believing it himself, but Aziraphale shakes his head.

“Aren’t  _you_  supposed to tempt people, dear?” he asks, smiling, hand still on Crowley’s neck. It’s all the permission Crowley needs and before he’s actually aware of what he’s doing, he’s dragged Aziraphale up the stairs to Aziraphale’s room and is kissing him, hard and desperate, tangled together like they’ve been for the past six thousand years.

Aziraphale trips and they fall onto the bed, conveniently.

It’s November, the window is open, and the air is cold, and Crowley shivers when it hits his skin, cold-blooded to the end, but Aziraphale pulls him close and he’d forgotten how  _warm_  the angel is.

Crowley’s snake-skin shoes, as it turns out,  _are_  shoes, but they’re very hard to get off, and he ends up collapsed, laughing, on top of a very exposed Aziraphale, trying to kick his shoes and trousers off. It happens eventually, but not before Aziraphale bursts out laughing as well, his breath tickling Crowley’s ear.

The pile of clothes on the floor is blissfully ignorant to how absolutely obscene the sounds Aziraphale makes are. Crowley wonders vaguely how long it’s been –  _if_  it’s been – for Aziraphale. A small voice in the back of his mind reminds him that Aziraphale probably tried very hard to make a decision about his earthly form once upon a time and got stuck that way and didn’t know what to do with himself.

Crowley doesn’t mind, really. He’d done that too, although it had been considerably easier as a demon. He  _is_ glad he kept some aspects of his serpentine self, though, as Aziraphale lets out a noise that is probably illegal in some countries.

He wonders briefly where Aziraphale threw his sunglasses when he pulled them from Crowley’s face, because _I want to see your eyes_.

The thought runs from his mind like a gazelle from a lion when Aziraphale pulls him back and kisses him and there’s something very wrong about this, on a universal level, but Crowley couldn’t care less if he tried, and Aziraphale pins Crowley to the bed, stronger than he looks, and Crowley suddenly can’t breathe and it _hurts_  but it  _doesn’t_  and it’s all quite confusing, so he just goes with it.

And then Aziraphale speaks to him, quiet and tender and in a language Crowley is sure he knew at some point, and everything gets ten times brighter and hotter and he can feel  _everything_ , everything he feels and everything Aziraphale is feeling and it’s beautiful, even though it’s sort of burning him where his soul should be. Or is. He’s not sure.

“It’s Enochian,” Aziraphale says in English, breathless, and kisses Crowley’s jaw. “You don’t want to know what it means.”

And no, Crowley probably doesn’t, though he feels like it’s probably blasphemous to be saying it at a time like this.

Aziraphale moves again and it’s like electricity and Crowley arches so sharply that his back makes a sort of cracking noise and Aziraphale freezes, eyes huge and worried.

“Don’t you  _dare_  stop,” Crowley gasps, and Aziraphale breathes out in relief against him, and mumbles something in the strange, familiar Enochian again, and holds Crowley very still, and kisses his shoulder, neck, lips, and Crowley thinks this was several millennia in the making, and Aziraphale moves again, and then Crowley stops thinking altogether.

They cling to each other and Aziraphale’s whole body tenses, and Crowley makes a sound between a moan and a hiss and sees stars.

It’s Crowley who says it first, in the end, quiet and with a sort of determinism, against Aziraphale’s shoulder.

“I love you, you know, angel,” he says, and if he wasn’t damned before, he’s sure he is now. Aziraphale smiles against Crowley’s neck and for a horrible, terrifying second, Crowley thinks that’s it.

“I love you too, you old serpent,” Aziraphale says then, and Crowley decides everything will be all right, even if he spends an eternity in agony.

Aziraphale sighs against Crowley’s skin and they curl around each other, unable to stop touching.

———-

It’s so late it’s early, and Aziraphale is sleeping, and Crowley, for the first time in as long as he can remember, is praying.

He doesn’t know who he’s praying to – nobody, everybody, it doesn’t matter.

Like a mantra, he chants it in his head, pressed against Aziraphale’s warm self:

 _Please keep him safe, please keep him safe, I don’t care what happens to me, just please keep him safe, don’t hurt him, please keep him safe_.

Aziraphale mutters something and shifts in his sleep, and buries his face in Crowley’s hair.

———-

It turns out that their punishment is to stay on Earth until the next Apocalypse and continue to thwart each other.

Crowley is suspicious that each side’s gone soft in its old age.

He and Aziraphale move to South Downs.

Life goes on.

Everyone lives ever after. Mostly happily, too.


End file.
